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 Alice thought, "He did that for three and a half years with Fidelia but he doesn't think of it now."

He went on. "I was brought up to take care of a house and to cut grass and shovel snow and tend a furnace; and I haven't looked in the face of a furnace, hot or cold, for years."

Alice made no comment, but when they came to the corner at which they always turned, in these days, to avoid the block in which was "their" flat, she said: "Shall we go on to-day?"

"Past the building, you mean?"

She nodded and he said, "I went by a couple of weeks ago."

She said: "I did once last spring." And they did not turn but this time went straight on and looked at the building and gazed at the windows on the second floor where was the apartment which was to have been theirs.

When they were by the building, Alice said, "I want to stop dodging other things, David."

He said, "I do."

"I'm thinking about Fidelia, you know as well as you knew I was thinking about—our flat."

"Of course I knew."

"Where is she now, David? Do you know?"

"I don't."

"Where do you think she is?"

"In London, I suppose; that's where she was going and Jessop said she got there."

"How do you think of her there?"

"With Bolton," he said shortly, "when I think of her definitely."